Aspects of the present invention are directed to a rackmount and, more particularly, to a rackmount rear door heat exchanger apparatus.
Rackmounts are typically employed in the information technology (IT) industry to support servers or similar computing devices in an easily accessible space. The servers generally run substantially continuously or nearly so in order to, e.g., support a network of other computers. In this capacity, the servers generate a significant amount of heat, even during normal operations, which must be removed or otherwise dissipated to thereby prevent the servers from overheating and either suffering from diminished performance or failing altogether.
In general, the removal/dissipation of heat has been accomplished by the generation of a cooling airflow over the servers. While this solution is effective at removing/dissipating heat, it is power and energy expensive. A further solution, then, has been to recycle the air from the airflow. In this solution, however, it is seen that it is necessary to cool the air prior to recycling it as the air is heated by the servers during the cooling.
The problem of cooling the air prior to the recycling has been addressed by the use of rear door heat exchangers disposed within the airflow of the rackmounts. However, while rear door heat exchangers are effective at cooling the air prior to recycling, rear door heat exchangers also typically have a single point of failure, that requires frequent and expensive service to fix during which, at least, the airflow and, oftentimes, the servers themselves must be shut down.